Archive for the ‘Customer Service’ Category

You’ve heard all the old stereotypes about used car salesmen–pushy, annoying, manipulative, dishonest, etc. However, I thought in this day and age that this was more or less a thing of the past. I had made three used car purchases, from three different dealerships, over the past seven years and all three had been really pleasant experiences to which I would attribute none of the aforementioned negative stereotypes.

Then I had the massive displeasure of making a used car purchase at Oxmoor Mazda in Louisville this past Friday. My goal in writing this blog post is to hope that you will do at least one of these two things: 1) find somewhere other than Oxmoor Mazda to make your next car purchase and 2) regardless of where you make your next car purchase, read about and learn from my experience.

The price on the car I was purchasing was fair enough but I felt that I was lowballed quite a bit on their offer on my trade-in. I did manage to negotiate back up a bit on the trade-in value but it was still a few hundred dollars what I felt it was worth.

Still, after finally agreeing to a deal, I had in hand an amount to be financed, a finance rate and length of loan. Now, I happen to hold two math degrees, but you really don’t need to have a math degree, or even a college degree to calculate what your monthly payments should be. Just Google “loan payment calculator” and pick any one of several websites that will do the same calculation for you. Just put in the amount financed, the rate and length of loan to get your monthly payment. I urge you as strongly as I possibly can to do this as soon as you have agreed to terms with the salesperson but BEFORE meeting with the finance person.

So here’s where things fell apart. Before signing any papers, the finance person tries to sell you one or both of two things, gap insurance and an extended warranty. Maybe there are specific circumstances where these things make sense but I’ve never found them to be worth any value. I get him to give up on the gap insurance pretty quickly, but he insists on quoting me what my monthly payments would be with the extended warranty. This figure is nearly $50/month more that what I know my payment would be without it. Now I ask him a question that, unbeknownst to him, I already know the answer to: “What is my monthly payment without the extended warranty?” He now flat-out lies to me and quotes me a monthly payment that is still about $20 above what it is supposed to be. Once I point out to him that I know what the payment should be and it’s not what he quoted me, he digs his hole deeper. He claims that he’s just reading a number of a computer screen and doesn’t know why my number doesn’t match his. He offers a way to discount the extended warranty so that my payment will match the figure he just quoted me a minute ago as being the payment without the extended warranty. I persist in wanting to know why the monthly payment without the warranty was so high and he responded, “My job is to make sure that you leave here satisfied, so if you want that to be your monthly payment I’ll make it that and [sales staff] will have to eat the difference.” That was flat-out lie #2. Nobody was taking any kind of a loss due to me getting the monthly payment that it was supposed to be in the first place. Perhaps somebody was not receiving a gain that he thought he was going to be able to get, but nobody lost anything.

The paperwork finally got printed out with the correct dollar figures in all places, and I did end up signing and leaving with my purchase. However, on Saturday I became increasingly angry about how I was treated and called the manager to complain. He wouldn’t admit that I had been lied to, but apologized that “I felt lied to.” He stated over and over that he wanted me to feel like I had a satisfactory experience, but really didn’t offer anything that overcame the experience that their finance guy put me through. The only thing really that is going to make me feel like I had a satisfactory experience is to share it in a blog post in hopes that others will either not go there at all or at least be ready for what they are going to experience if they do.

If you had a very negative experience at a car dealership, please share in the comments.